“It becomes like a source, just like reading the textbook”: towards an expanded GenAI-informed multiliteracies model

This paper examines how the meanings of GenAI are socially constructed in classroom practice. Using two illustrative cases of the use of ChatGPT in Norwegian classrooms, the paper analyses the dominant construction of GenAI as “resource” or “text” and relates this textual construction to technology being routinely authorized for schoolwork. Student departures from the traditional model, such as constructing GenAI as a tutor or editor, are examined in tension with traditional practices and for how they are constrained or domesticated by the resource model. Next, drawing from these illustrations, the paper critically reconsiders the early multiliteracies model, which itself is resource-focused, and calls for expansions that permit us to conceive how GenAI is both agent and (generated) resource. The first type of expansion involves understanding how large language models, or LLMs, are active in composing, in addition to the metalanguage of semiotic resources. The second type of expansion calls for new understandings of critical framing to include not only semiotic metalanguage but also modelling language and critical meta-platform consciousness. Together, these considerations lead us to not only expand pedagogies, but also to rethink how social futures may be actively designed towards sustainability, human flourishing, and social justice.